Chapter 45: A Quiet Infiltration

Words could not describe how glad Rhos was after separating from Ripley. She means well but that woman was starting to drive him as crazy as she was, and it had taken no shortage of effort to convince her that they needed to split up to cover more ground.

In truth, Rhos just wanted some distance from her before her particular brand of insanity started rubbing off on him.

The two of them had spent the last 4 hours wandering through the black market, searching for any information concerning the little girl.

The black market was exactly what its name implied; it was a clandestine network where goods and services were exchanged beyond the reach of government regulation, where criminals, smugglers, mercenaries and all manner of shady people could acquire things that could never be legally obtained on the surface.

Despite its reputation, the place itself did not look particularly different from an ordinary street market. It had streets lined with vendors, customers browsing stalls and merchants loudly advertising their wares. The difference became obvious once one actually paid attention to what was being sold.

There were resources here that would have been considered contraband anywhere else, rare materials saturated with spiritual energy, illegally harvested animal parts, stolen spiritech components and much more. Some stalls displayed living creatures in reinforced cages, mutants especially who were being sold as whatever their buyer wanted.

Rhos did his best to avoid looking too closely at those stalls. He already had enough problems without becoming involved in slave trade.

What he could not ignore, however, was his biggest weakness.

He nearly developed a headache after seeing some of the resources being sold. Their prices were.... Cheap!

Materials that would have cost him an arm and a leg through legitimate channels were so cheap! The merchants here were practically giving some of them away.

Certain ingredients necessary for spiritual refinement were being offered here for fractions of their normal price. If he actually had money, he would have already bought enough of them to fill several bags and probably spent the rest of the month refining himself.

Fortunately, being broke had a way of solving that particular temptation.

If he had asked Ripley, she probably would have bought anything he wanted without hesitation or question. But nothing was for free. That was precisely why he had avoided asking.

He already owed her for helping him search for the girl, and he disliked owing people anything. That crazy woman was not exactly the sort of person he wanted accumulating favors over him, especially when she had already made it abundantly clear that she intended to collect the one she had been promised.

So Rhos had spent hours walking beside her while pretending not to be interested in the things he absolutely wanted.

After some time of asking questions, following rumors and speaking to people who were willing to sell information for the right price, they finally found a lead.

One of Ripley’s associates had apparently heard about two men who had recently acquired a strange captive, describing her simply as a ’white and red girl with horns’. That description had been enough for Rhos to know they were talking about the child.

Unlike the surface world, the black market operated according to a simple principle; qash is king.

Everything has a price. There was no loyalty between criminals. No honor among thieves. If someone offered enough qash, even information that could get another person killed would eventually find its way into the hands of the highest bidder.

One thing led to another and before they knew it, the two of them were breaking into the hideout of the people supposedly holding his newly manifested Spirit.

Rhos had wanted to approach the place quietly, but Ripley had somehow interpreted that differently.

The moment they entered the underground facility, she began slaughtering anyone who crossed their path. Those who attempted to fight back discovered there was an enormous difference in skill and got killed.

Some had the unfortunate luck of being test subjects to her various methods of putting down her target with as much suffering as possible.

At one point, Rhos watched her interrogate a man before killing him. From this man, they learnt the location of where captives were kept in this facility.

Rhos had seen death before.

He watched Rangers die in front of him for years. He had personally killed wild animals and had been forced to fight a horror. He had even watched Keeper Taru getting eaten alive in front of him.

But there was something disturbing about watching Ripley kill.

She treated human life like it was nothing more than a game. The worst part was that she seemed to genuinely enjoy herself.

He had seen that side of her plenty of times, but it disturbed him every time. He didn’t know if that was the influence of her Patron Spirit or not. If anything, she seemed more comfortable with the darker part of herself.

Still, he had bigger concerns.

Her massacre had served one useful purpose, at least. Everyone inside the hideout was now aware that something was wrong, and most of the guards had rushed toward the noise.

That gave Rhos the opportunity he needed.

His camouflage trait was particularly useful here. It allowed him to blend into natural surfaces whenever he remained completely still. In the dim underground tunnels where the weak lighting made it difficult to see several meters ahead, Rhos could stand against a wall and become almost indistinguishable from the darkness.

Every so often he had to stop and let someone pass. He had even caught one of them alone.

He emerged from the darkness, dragged one into the abyss and extracted everything he needed before leaving him unconscious.

The information he received further solidified where the captives were being kept. He memorized the directions he was given and continued his covert operation.

Everything had been going surprisingly well. He was almost at the next passage when something suddenly came swinging out from the darkness.

He threw himself sideways just as when a massive fist smashed into the wall where his head had been a moment ago, pulverising stone upon contact. He rolled across the floor and immediately sprang back onto his feet.

Rhos wasted no time in putting several meters between himself and his attacker, his eyes narrowing.

’There go my efforts of avoiding direct confrontation’